I know, I know. It's free so what do I expect?

Well, I'll tell you. I expect it to work right! I expect it not to introduce problems in other applications. To be honest I expect it to function perfectly as it's designed. You see, I'm fairly anal retentive. Little things that most people shrug off irk me. When I see something slightly "off" it begins to invade my thoughts in a pernicious and aggravating fashion, growing in scope beyond all rational boundaries until it becomes an obsessive need to fix or destroy. This is actually a positive trait in my line of work (software quality assurance, otherwise known as bug hunting). This isn't an all encompassing character trait though. I don't obsess about a clean desk or a tidy silverware drawer. My anal side manifests primarily when I'm dealing with something that I'm personally responsible for - something I've created.

My own blog is now putting me into the throws of obsessive behavior because of some screwed up crap in Blogger that I can't identify. Look at my right sidebar. Notice the 2 pixel wide line of white along the right side? That's not supposed to be there. In fact, according to the template coding it isn't there. Can't possibly be there. When I preview through Blogger it isn't there. When I take the html and display it on a local page it isn't there. It's only there when it is BlogSpot that is serving the html.

What the hay? The sidebar is also wider when BlogSpot is the host. By a good 30 pixels. What the heck is going on here? Is that intruded BlogSpot banner ad screwing things up?

So what do I do now? The situation cannot be allowed to continue. That's simply not an option for my sick mind. I can either change the template again (but I like this design!) or move off of BlogSpot to a host that won't screw with my html when they display it. A new host would be nice but it has to be free. It's also a hassle of immense proportions compared to the size of the problem.

Crap. Guess it's time to monkey around with the template again.

Update: All better now. I moved the sidebars in so it doesn't matter if there's a wacky 2 pixel screwup off one side of them. Nice little whitespace addition. Sort of makes the blog look more "magaziney", if you know what I mean.

Posted by: Jim at 07:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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